Want to know a weird feeling? Hearing about the announced sequel to a classic game, and feeling remarkably depressed about it. It’d be one thing if this was a sequel to a game I loathed in the past like Mystery Quest. But the game in question is NiGHTS into Dreams, which I haven’t played and considered a classic by quite a few friends. It’s kind of strange, but it ties into the tragic loss of one of my closest friends, Chris Dorrego, or Quin as his friends knew him.
To begin, I met Quin at a get-together for a board local to my high school, called Dragon World.We were gathering for a movie, and he was chatting with a couple other friends I knew, so I got introduced to him. At the time, he seemed like a manic kid in an adult’s body, wearing a jester’s cap with bells and running on massive amounts of sugar (and as I soon learned, caffeine). He had a bit of scruff and smoked like a chimney, but it kind of added to his charm – a devil-may-care attitude along with a complete disregard for normality. Naturally, I took to him right away.
However, it didn’t take long before I learned that he often wore a mask, but wasn’t afraid to take it off for people. As he readily admitted, he was a recovering alcoholic. As I got to know him better, he told me stories about his addiction, and some of the foul things he did while under the influence. He wasn’t proud of what he did, but he was admitting it and willing to confront it, and I was honestly floored. I guess the best way to describe it was that I was feeling kinship with him. I used silliness to hide my own issues many a time in the past. And it was refreshing to see someone try to tackle their issues head-on, to make things better.
And he knew pain and bitterness, too. In fact, his usual online alias Harlequin (which we shortened as above) was taken up after a bitter break-up he had. It was once when he went to see The Crow, in make-up, that a girl broke up with him. He cried, and the resulting running of his face paint made him resemble a harlequin’s make-up, so that’s the name he took. The idea of a giddy clown mask hiding a pained heart? I’d say that the teenager in me understood that melodrama all too well, but to be honest I know the adult me would react the same.
But he was working on putting that behind him. He had joined Alcoholics Anonymous for the second time, and stuck with it. He had cleaned up, went back to school for his GED (he dropped out of high school as his alcoholism progressed), and he became friends with me and my online circle. He got a job, and he was working to put right all the little things that he did wrong while an alcoholic. In more than one way, he was and still is an inspiration. He had fouled up worse than I ever had, and fell rather far. And he still struggled to set things right and improve himself. I respect that level of perseverance, and knowing I became someone he drew upon to continue made me feel like I could overcome my problems, whatever they were.
I don’t remember too much of the conversation, but I remember that said perseverance tied into why he liked NiGHTS into Dreams more than any other game. I remember it fairly well – one night while hanging out at a playground, we chatted video games. And of course, I asked him his favorite game of all time.
Now, one thing that you need to know about Quin, he was a natural storyteller. Particularly when speaking, he just knew the cadences to have you hang on his every word, and draw you into the story. So to hear him talk about NiGHTS... to be honest, no fan of NiGHTS ever convinced me as much as he did that night that it was a game worth playing. And of course, like many people who enjoyed the game, he talked about how much fun flying around was. He talked of how much freedom you had while playing, and how much he enjoyed the concept of regaining your positive virtues to retake your dreams.
But the way he talked about the story, well, at my most fanciful, I sometimes try to channel that moment under the stars in a playground in south Florida. He talked about that story, and he talked about the emotional connection he had with the game. And even though I don’t remember the words, I remember the feeling he imparted on those words. I know that part of it was how much he identified with the game – the idea of gathering your inner strength to banish the darkness, and finding the hope when all else seems lost. But most of all, I saw the pure joy a video game could bring someone, and how it made him feel more alive, even more human. I almost never see that level of joy and passion for a video game, and he had it for NiGHTS.
If anyone deserved to know of its impending sequel, it’d be Quin. But then, life isn’t always fair. In summer of 1999, I remember getting a fateful phone call, from my girlfriend (also a friend of Quin’s), who told me the news: Quin had cancer. Specifically, he had leukemia, and it was extremely aggressive. He instantly went on a vigorous chemotherapy regiment, and was active in trying to keep alive. Even when they found that he had an extremely persistent form of the disease, he was willing to fight on – choosing to undergo a bone marrow transplant that at its best offered a 40% chance of living (but if he did, the cancer would be defeated for good).
And he freely admitted he was scared, and that he cried more than once at the whole ordeal. But still, he did his best to persevere. He talked boldly, that he was going to get the transplant and get killed by getting hit by a semi, like a real man. Even as we knew the odds, we talked about having him visit me in Boston when it was all over, so that we’d be able to celebrate yet another close scrape.
But the odds caught up with him. Before he could even have the transplant, the ravages of cancer consumed his body, and he went into systematic organ failure. Only a couple days after he got a care package from me and my girlfriend, he went into a coma as his body went into one last fight to stay together. It wasn’t to be. Christopher “Quin” Dorrego finally succumbed to his disease seven years to the day this is published, April 12, 2000. He was 27.
Thus, it’s with the heavy memory of a good friend that I greet the news of a new NiGHTS game. I almost don’t want the game to happen, because I feel like Quin should have been alive for it. I mean, my first son’s middle name is going to be Quin in his honor – that’s how much his memory means to my wife and I, and it still hurts to be without him. I’ll pick up the game, though, and play it in his memory. Quin is gone – but his dream lives.
